It is virtually superfluous to point out how fashionable - how simply divine, darling - babies are right now. More than fashionable; apple-cheeked micro-people are the ultimate in chic. Fashion's flashest VIPs are popping them out left, right and centre, and those among us who sop up tabloid and glossy gossip with piggy gusto have recently shared the vague but persistent suspicion that Liz Hurley, Sarah Jessica Parker, Elle McPherson, Kate Moss and others of their fabulous ilk actually invented conception, pregnancy, birth, and the Emmalunga pram.

They certainly conduct procreation a whole lot differently from our parents. Where are the voluminous, moo-moo maternity frocks? The puffy ankles? The pain? Where is the mess? The fuss? The girl-pink, boy-blue and non-gender-specific buttercup-yellow and Bonds-white micro-fashions? Where's the puke? (OK, they do talk ever-so pluckily about puke, but where is it?)

Liz, Elle, Kate et al apparently whizzed through it all with neat, basketball bellies, tight pants, crop tops, personal trainers and a handy list of 20-second sound-bites on the joy of it all. The sheer joy and wonder, in fact, and a fat contract for their tips, tricks and step-by-step guide to regaining a washboard-flat belly in two short weeks.

No wonder babies are chic. Like most fashions worth their hyperbole, they perpetuate myths and fantasies.

Out here in Reality, however, we know babymaking has little in common with Liz's and Kates's rendition in the weeklies, except for the loveable bundle that appears for us all at the end. At least there's that. (And even "loveable" isn't guaranteed.) Yes, even in Reality, the ultimate prize for a not-so-chic pregnancy and messy birth is still a "Mini me" who can be frocked up like a dolly in endless, fashionable expressions of mummy's innate taste and individuality. That is guaranteed.

Among the designer baby labels that have proliferated like daisies in springtime in recent years, it is a rare romper that comes in any less than a deluxe palette of paintbox colours and distinctly grown-up gamut of finer details and structural features. So inventive has babywear become, in fact, that the traditional shades of boy-blue and girl-pink, once the sum of micro fashions a decade ago, are, ironically, now considered cutting-edge.